No Hands On The Clock

So many things change. Few things ever change. Long ago, barely any time at all, I went to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s BOOGIE NIGHTS at the Hollywood Galaxy on opening weekend in 1997 when about halfway through the film broke. Oddly enough, this happened only seconds after the shocking end of the New Year’s Eve sequence which, everything else aside, might be the perfect place to put an intermission. The crowd reaction to this was not good, as you would imagine, and they let the theater know this. But in the middle of all those people complaining and along with my own annoyance at having the film interrupted, this was also a slight issue for me that day because I was supposed to meet a friend immediately after right down the street at the Chinese to see DEVIL’S ADVOCATE which also opened that weekend. After several minutes of worrying the film finally started up again, eventually ended and I made it to see Keanu Reeves & Al Pacino just in time. All these years later that double bill feels like one of the best afternoons at the movies I’ve ever had. And there I was only some months back now, so long ago, down the street at the Vista in the fall of 2025 seeing the latest Paul Thomas Anderson film ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER playing on its first afternoon to a sold out house in the full glory of VistaVision when at roughly forty-seven minutes in the film broke, actually burning up in the frame. Considering all the hype around the format of the presentation it was easy to be concerned, even though this time I had nowhere else to be. But everyone in the theater stayed calm as if they correctly knew the theater would get it fixed shortly and that’s exactly what happened. The film played without further interruptions and went on to its lengthy run at the theater. This may not be much of a story, but it did happen.

The VistaVision element was a huge part of how the film was being sold at the time, complete with actual punch cards handed out at the Vista detailing all the formats you could see it in. Now, with all of that over but hopefully with revival screenings in the future whether in 70mm, 35mm or even actual VistaVision, what we’re left with is the film itself which can easily be called the best of 2025 and possibly even the best of the years surrounding it. This is also a film that means so much right now, so much more than others do, and now still less than a year after it opened, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER already feels like an essential film of the moment as well as an essential part of what’s going on around us. It already feels like a film that matters and will continue to matter, that what it’s saying means something as so much is spiraling out of control. Along with the very serious notions that it confronts about the past, future and present we’re being forced to live in, every moment of the film is infused with an undeniable feeling of pure intensity as it builds through the increasing suspense of the ongoing chase that keeps going through the second half, as well as some of the funniest moments in any film over the past few years. But it also contains an emotional power that I can’t shake and even after multiple viewings, the film remains a completely exhilarating experience. Down to the very last frame, it feels like what a film is supposed to be, what a film needs to be, at this moment in time. And it feels like it’s going to continue to be exactly that.

“Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explosives expert for the revolutionary group the French 75, intent on breaking out immigrants held in migrant centers and spreading their message through various means, wreaking havoc on banks as well as politicians. He’s also the lover of fellow French 75 member Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) who comes from a long line of revolutionaries, unlike Pat. When she encounters Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), one of the commanding officers in charge, during one of their breakouts and he becomes immediately obsessed with her which includes coercing her into sex with him. She soon gives birth to a baby girl and though Pat is now focused on the baby, Perfidia continues her revolutionary activities which soon go bad when a security guard is killed during a bank robbery. She is arrested, then after pressure from Lockjaw whose interest in her has continued, gives up her cohorts and as she goes into Witness Protection, Pat flees with the baby. But Perfidia quickly abandons her new situation and escapes across the border to Mexico. Sixteen years later, Pat is now living under the identity of Bob Ferguson with the girl (Chase Infiniti) now known as Willa Ferguson, sixteen years old and very much her own person who, like most teenagers, is always arguing with her father. Lockjaw, meanwhile, has risen in the ranks of the military and now has the chance to join the ultra-secret white supremacist group known as the Christmas Adventurers Club but he must use his authority to track down the girl he believes to be his daughter and wipe every trace linking him to Perfidia away.

Sometimes you can feel how special a film is down in your bones as you experience it for the first time and you know that this is only going to be the first viewing of many. How the very act of seeing that film is going to become addictive. And sometimes I can’t stop watching ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER or at the very least I don’t want to. Right from the start the film offers a feeling of exhilaration which becomes so entertaining, so full of life, so moving and terrifying, always willing to embrace the ideas that keep on popping through it and always willing to confront them, turning every scene into yet another extension of all the ideas it wants to explore. Through its examination of what people become in this version of the world we’re currently living in, how they grow and change through different times, along with how much what we do affects the generation to come, it fits in perfectly with every single film Paul Thomas Anderson has made up to this point. In many ways, it feels like a sort of culmination of so many of the ideas that he’s been exploring. Every moment is thrilling, each character pops even if they only appear for an instant, every scene feels so finely honed down to its essence and what it needs to be. The way the film makes its choices is fearless, finding the correct tone between the outrageously satirical and the deadly serious nature of the time we live in which is unavoidable as well as feeling all too recognizable. Through this, it becomes one of the few films to acknowledge how dangerous the current moment really is as well as how absurd, somehow finding a way to satirize what already feels too much like satire in the first place no matter how hateful and reprehensible it is, no matter how much what these people truly are feels worse than we ever imagined. But the film also knows what can be found in the sense of joy which can come out being unrelentingly defiant against that hatred and it fits in perfectly with Paul Thomas Anderson’s other films while at the same time becoming more of a crowd pleaser than they have ever been before. Being a crowd pleaser isn’t what makes it great. But the rush you get from that effect by the end of the film is undeniable.

So much of what the film is can be found in the sense of movement. The film begins in motion, after all, and the uneasy feeling begins right from the first notes of music played over the Warner Bros. logo, the feeling that what’s about to happen matters. Perfidia Beverly Hills is the one seen first, her steady walk facing the oncoming trucks on the freeway checking out the scene of the immigrant detention center before their attack. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, written by Paul Thomas Anderson and inspired by "Vineland" by Thomas Pynchon, barely sits still for a moment, with a sense of jagged momentum that keeps moving every second forward, a fusion of camerawork, editing and music which becomes seamless in a way that makes them all fit together. “Ghetto” Pat, the ostensible main character, appears soon enough but Perfidia is the one seen first, through his eyes as well as ours, and she’s the one who is really causing this forward motion even as she remains an enigma to us and everyone else in the film, one of several strong, extremely sexualized women of color among these revolutionaries and only willing to explain themselves on their own terms. The first half-hour of the film is in some ways an enigma as well, plot details getting revealed with an exhilaration to each movement and every single cut but there’s little to understand that can’t be read in her face, a Mona Lisa who doesn’t let anyone know her motivations even though the men around her think they can. The mystery of what she does through what feels like the complete denial of her pregnancy both before and after which is never explained and instead of trying to understand it herself, in the end she merely flees. And the film becomes about the hole her absence creates, especially considering how unusual it is for such a prominent character to exit a film this early unless they’ve been killed off, and it’s the hole anyone’s absence leaves when you don’t fully understand so nothing can feel complete ever again. Perfidia was basically the main character, then suddenly she drops out of the film so her daughter Willa essentially assumes the mantle of the film’s main character from her mother because there’s no one else around who can live up to it.

And the film does keep moving through all this, but it also starts nowhere in particular. It’s set in a time that could be this moment, it could be 16 years ago for us or maybe not, even with all the references to social media and Tom Cruise, whenever that really is. The way Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL began with a title card reading “Somewhere in the 20th Century” this film could be set somewhere, anywhere, in the 21st, a century in which so many things have collapsed into a bland sort of sameness, just like how in the Gilliam film things stay the same while nothing seems to work anymore. Partly set in the sanctuary city of Bakton Cross, wherever this is supposed to be, there’s a reference to Bob drinking at the Rustic Inn although presumably not the one down the street from me in Los Feliz where I used to go all the time but could very well be named for it anyway. The French 75 is partly a fantasy version of what a true revolutionary group would be if it existed now leading to absurdist extremes but the film only takes that idea so far and knows they’re a bunch of fuck ups, good at the speeches but not so much at the actions, the way Shayna A. McHayle’s Junglepussy gets everyone’s attention during the bank robbery but is immediately thrown off by what her colleague Perfidia is doing off to the side to change the narrative. Unlike the other side they still seem human, no matter how dangers they still might be. They’re the side that knows how to fuck without getting hung up about it, even if Perfidia knows how to keep her secrets from Ghetto Pat. And the other side doesn’t know how to handle this at all. In other words, the film is set right now.

Among other things, Paul Thomas Anderson films are also about family. This really doesn’t need to be questioned. Of course, what a family really is can mean any number of different things and whether it’s literally that or the people who become a family as they become part of each other’s lives. Sometimes this is about the idea of parents and what they are as we try to understand the hold that they have over us forever, like it or not. HARD EIGHT is about a man who essentially becomes a surrogate parent to his protégé while keeping his own secret about what he knows about the younger man’s real father. BOOGIE NIGHTS is about a family created after the main character flees his real mother who is last seen heartlessly screaming at him in a way that always hits a little too close to home for me. MAGNOLIA has Tom Cruise’s Frank T.J. Mackey refusing to forgive until he breaks down but it still feels ambivalent, uncertain of forgiveness and whether it can ever be deserved. This can go on, but after PHANTOM THREAD which ends with a birth when two people have finally come together as the union they have created becomes undeniable and in LICORICE PIZZA which ends with Gary and Alana also coming together, whatever that really means, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER begins at things fully from the point of view of the parents, aware of who they’ve been and how they’ve screwed things up with the offspring needing the entire film before they can come to peace with where they came from but the relationships also blur the line on which is which.

Col. Steven J. Lockjaw is given just enough power to make him a threat while being pathetic to his very core, refusing to admit his own sexuality to himself and looking only for what he believes he deserves, an Anakin Skywalker of the real world turned Darth Vader looking to destroy his own offspring, who in her own way might be a Luke Skywalker. Or maybe she’s just someone trying to make the world better, living in the shadow of what was her very pregnant mother, each of them seen at different points going through training, firing that giant machine gun followed by the similar framing of her daughter firing another weapon under the watchful eyes of the Sisters of the Brave Beaver (maybe the one section of the film which feels like it got short shrift in the edit even as the piercing voice of April Grace, also the reporter interviewing Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA, as head nun Sister Rochelle is difficult to shake) as well as the haunted look of Regina Hall close by watching each time, maybe thinking of the past, maybe wondering if it can all go wrong again.

“Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little,” goes that very short piece of narration when the film jumps forward. Of course it has. It all goes by in a flash, and it cuts in right on that first shot of Willa, everything good and hopeful in the world in her beaming face. The film presents an exaggeration of our current moment but the way the other side is presented never feels exaggerated at all, maybe because there is no way to exaggerate it because, as someone once famously and correctly stated, they’re weird. In the calm, deadpan way Anderson shoots it, all he needs to do is simply display this. Lockjaw wants to be part of that world, he’s weird too after all, though he never can be. He’s human and he’s damaged, the way he walks and talks to people is almost the way a little boy does, his references like referring to kids as ‘teeny boppers’ has no connection to the world today, but there’s no way to feel sorry for him, using his command for his own personal reasons, a reminder of how much all the actions taken by the authorities are just for show and if other people get hurt by it, all the better. The world gets fucked with because people are trying to clean up their own shit in the guise of their fake assault on Bakton Cross which even manages to piss off the all-powerful Christmas Adventurers, the way their chicken nuggets they like so much get fucked with not to mention a business owned by someone who is on their side. These weirdos who clearly don’t know what to do with their feelings about that, the racism and the hatred as well as the belief that they’re in charge all mixed in with their very likely latent homosexuality. “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us,” was the way it was stated in MAGNOLIA and it’s what ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER looks at, whether the characters know it or not.

Bob aka “Ghetto” Pat doesn’t know about any of this, or at least he’s trying not to think about it. He’s allegedly the lead of his film, just as Kurt Russell’s Jack Burton clearly thought he was the lead of BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA but even as Bob is apparently a legend among the French 75, we don’t see much evidence of this and he barely seems to matter at times to anyone else around him, just looking to sit around the house paranoid while getting high and watching THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. Still, he seems to earn some points by at least trying to refer to Willa’s friend by the correct pronouns even as she still gets annoyed with him over this. Right from the start he’s always looking for direction, scrambling to get away from his house, desperately looking for where he’s supposed to go, desperately trying to get a piece of information from the people who called him in what feels like the most accurate portrayal of a customer service call ever and maybe one of the funniest sequences in any movie in years culminating in Bob shouting “Fuck you!” to Comrade Josh when he is told nothing more than what the correct response to the code words asking ‘what time is it?’ always was and hearing the totally obvious extra meaning to that password right away. His scrambling around throughout the film does nothing except to be there at the precise moment he needs to be to tell Willa who he is, who he really is but the way he’s helped by those women seems to remind him how necessary his fight is. Benicio del Toro's Sensei floats in and out of what’s happening around him, helping out Bob but also focused on all the other people he’s helping, so while Bob has accomplished nothing compared to him he does seem to understand that he’s not good enough, not even as good as the rioters out there on the streets or those skateboards who are leading him as they flee across the rooftops with a dreamlike lucidity that almost turns the sequence into a musical number for a few seconds, the imagery becoming like a ballet except for Bob who doesn’t know all the right steps.

The way ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER tells its story through every single shot it’s clear which side Paul Thomas Anderson is on. And which side the movie is on. The film doesn’t need speeches for that. It gets that feeling from each touch of humanity. It’s a movie about the moment and about decisions, not a movie about speeches or literal things or events. It’s not Sidney Lumet’s RUNNING ON EMPTY, to name one of the films that Anderson presented on TCM when his film came out; others included MIDNIGHT RUN, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE SEARCHERS and, no surprise considering its pertinent cameo in his film, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS. They all make sense as an inspiration for him but the themes and ideas of the way the past connects to the present are there, done in the way people behave and the way Lockjaw’s selfish, arrogant defiance is made clear, the regret heard in Perfidia’s voice at the end. And it’s all about the chases, how so much the film is really one long chase, given a jagged momentum which eventually becomes relentless goosed on the by the incessant, jangling of the phenomenal Johnny Greenwood score which becomes passionately emotional any time it reminds us of Willa’s link to Perfidia. The camerawork by Michael Bauman which makes the faces and vistas equally important in that VistaVision clarity, from the intimacy of the closeups to the epic feeling as what happens when they confront each other, the standoff between Willa and Lockjaw. The editing by Andy Jurgensen which finds every single moment to make the scene about. It’s in the serenity of Sensei who doesn’t appear until the jump forward in time but he’s more of a true revolutionary than any of the French 75 ever are. Staying calm through every tense moment, repeating the mantra of ocean waves to Bob, ocean waves. That’s what Bob is searching for, those ocean waves to ride, ocean waves which are found in the form of those hills on the road that make up the big pursuit that develops with such perfect clarity that made it clear it was one of the most perfect cinematic chase scenes in decades, leading Bob exactly where he needs to be. And those ocean waves seen in those hills make perfect sense in how they lead Bob, fuck up that he is, to exactly where he needs to be.

In the end, what is ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER to me? It’s a film about what’s happening right now but it’s also about the past and the future and finding peace with it all for the right reasons, the way we look back on our life and try to understand what has happened to us, those moments of regret swirling in and out of our head. But if you don’t regret anything, if you don’t question anything, if you don’t try to understand your past and where you came from and why, are you even living? When you grow up, really grow up, you either understand certain things about the world and life around you or you don’t. Willa understanding her mother and understanding the man who she will always think of as her father. Lockjaw, too stupid to comprehend that he’ll never be what the Christmas Adventurers want and it all leads to the final image of Lockjaw just as Bob is telling the girl who is his daughter about the letter from her mother, the letter that will help her understand her mother in a way she never could. It's the dream that maybe your child will be the one who puts the world right, the dream that maybe you’ll be reunited as she willingly drives towards the fight, even if it is in Oakland which according to Bob is pretty far. Because there is no final battle. Things really do keep going. But it finds the possibility of a happy ending in the middle of everything happening now and, thinking of this, the final image of ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER means more to me each time I see it. This feeling of hope. That that maybe one day things will be made right, in spite of all the horrible evidence around us. I may not be so sure about this on some days, but ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER believes that it’s possible.

Leonardo DiCaprio is playing someone who doesn’t know a lot, who means well but he’s still a fuckup. And he’s tremendous here, with astounding comic timing, fierce determination and a haunted look in his eyes as he tries to come to terms with the way he’s failed Willa. That confusion in his eyes holds the movie together, knowing that he’s a few steps behind everyone and still trying to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know or care what that is. There’s only a brief moment in the film with both DiCaprio and Sean Penn but it’s one of the best in the film for each of them with the terror in Pat’s eyes suddenly realizing what’s happened and the nastiness of Lockjaw coming full bore. Penn, who basically won the Oscar the day this film opened, finds that line between pure satire as if he could have given this performance in DR. STRANGELOVE with an intensity filled with misplaced confidence that is always totally vicious and arrogant, each little gesture terrifying and absurd. Even his walk alone is unlike anything else.

And there’s also the total calm of Benicio del Toro as Sensei, living up to that Japanese poster for SUPERMAN on his wall while always showing no fear, complete frankness towards who he’s dealing with and knowing exactly what to do at every moment. Even if she doesn’t enter the film until well into it, Chase Infiniti is electric and fearless in her own way, fully formed right from when we see her but still the teenage girl she has to be, always ready to look someone in the eye and challenge them, no matter which one of her fathers it is. Teyana Taylor controls the first half-hour with that look on her face, the sound of her voice reading the letter at the end. The two halves that the film resists ever showing together at the same time. In some ways it’s felt in the haunted look on Regina Hall’s face and the deadly seriousness to her voice in each moment she gets. But there are so many moments. Tony Goldwyn for the way he reacts to Lockjaw, Jim Downey who gets to say both “punk trash and “semen demon”, Kevin Tighe whose phenomenal line reading of “we should all be able to eat off the floor” and the way John Hoogenakker who’s been called in to do that cleaning they need done says, “Oh no, I love their nuggets.” There’s also moments like the completely real nature of so many small parts like Tisha Sloan in her one scene as Willa’s teacher but also the true banality of evil that comes off non-actor James Raterman as the military officer in charge of finding Willa, a guy who knows how to get his job done more than anyone else in the film.

Our stories begin long before we’re here. They follow us through our past, our regrets, our failures, the way we run from one theater to another to make it to DEVIL’S ADVOCATE on time when nothing else could possibly be as important. Years later the Chinese Theater would become important to me for very different reasons. But one thing the past decade has done to me is make me miss satire. I want it back. And here it is. But the film has so much more. Willa leaves at the end of the film as Tom Petty singing “American Girl” plays at the end as Willa gets in her car and maybe the song is about her, maybe it’s a Jonathan Demme reference since it was once in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, maybe the song is a reference to its appearance in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH which happens to star one of this film’s main actors. That’s the way all these films seem to flow into each other like it or not, the way one trip to the movies can remind us of another so many years later. Through it all, the world changes very little. Which may be the only thing we can ever know for sure.

Politics Is Perception

The things you respond to in life change. This is inevitable. It should be, at the very least. Maybe I was sort of a political junkie long ago, but by a certain point it just started to make me too ill to keep paying attention to all that. And for a long time now it’s been getting worse, more depressing, more terrifying. I’d rather focus on better things in life like films but that gets difficult, especially these days. I also have zero desire to revisit THE WEST WING right now and the very idea seems too upsetting to me even if I was once a huge fan of the show (and SPORTS NIGHT too), at least the first four seasons. Which made me an Aaron Sorkin fan, I suppose. Maybe I responded to all the wit and idealism, maybe I always hoped that if I ever ran into him somewhere we could compare notes on being from Scarsdale or something. And forgetting that I have decidedly mixed feelings about what he’s done in the years since (THE SOCIAL NETWORK may be one of the best films of the 21st century but that doesn’t mean I don’t have further thoughts on the matter) something about THE WEST WING makes me feel a little uneasy now. Though I can remember being attracted to the very idea of the show focused on the supposed glorious tradition of the U.S. political system, shining a light on the people trying to make things better along with a politeness that was never really there and certainly isn’t now, too much of it doesn’t feel right anymore. Maybe it just reminds me too much of the real world instead of getting me to forget.

The seeds of THE WEST WING were of course planted in the screenplay Sorkin wrote several years earlier for the film that was Rob Reiner’s THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, released in November 1995 on the same day as GOLDENEYE, and thinking about all this recently led to thoughts about the utter horror of what happened to Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. I don’t want to talk about that but of course it all led me to further thoughts of Reiner and his career. It led me to thoughts of what he believed in. And it led me to thoughts of how people reacted to what happened to this man who I never knew, who I only saw once at a movie long ago and another time at a Dodgers game but had been a presence in the world for me almost as long as I can remember, moving from TV stardom to a director of films that included one of the funniest ever made (THIS IS SPINAL TAP) along with one of the most endearing romantic comedies ever made (WHEN HARRY MET SALLY). In addition to his directorial work that followed there was his political activism as well as continuing to play numerous roles in other people’s films that seemed to be almost for the sheer pleasure of just doing it. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT was Reiner’s follow up to the critical and commercial disaster of NORTH the previous year and everything about it felt like a film designed to be a huge crowd pleaser, to make $100 million along with receiving multiple Oscar nominations. In the end the film made “only” $60 million domestically, not a flop but not a smash either, then got just a single Oscar nomination, for Marc Shaiman’s score. When Rob Reiner turned up for a cameo in friend Albert Brooks’ THE MUSE a few years later to thank Sharon Stone’s title character for the film, the moment seemed a little disingenuous. Returning to the film now in addition to all the feelings it brings up about the way the world has gone in real life since then, it feels like an attempt by the director at a pitch right down the middle which maybe ended up just a bit outside, the desire to say something about the political world fused with the ambition of a Capraesque romantic comedy perhaps undercut by the abrasiveness to the story. The very particular rhythms to the Aaron Sorkin dialogue, meanwhile, feel like they wound up being perfected in those TV shows a few years later and here is all still being worked on. Conceptually, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT might be as close to a perfect screenplay as anything that came out in 1995 but in practice my feelings about the actual film are a little more complicated.

President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), a widower and father of a teenage girl, is celebrating the release of a new poll that places him with a 63% favorable rating and has hopes to pass a crime bill off the strength of those numbers when he meets Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), an environmental lobbyist working for a firm that looks to pass a radical new fossil fuel package to reduce carbon emissions. Instantly smitten, Shepherd asks her to be his date at a state dinner for the French President where in full view of everyone they dance and their romance begins. As this happens and they get to know each other better, Senator Robert Rumsen (Richard Dreyfuss) of the opposing party and looking to run for President himself, begins to step up his attacks based on that relationship but even as the poll numbers dip, Shepherd refuses to comment to the press on the relationship. But as the bills they are working on begin to falter and Rumsen’s attacks become personal, the President soon realizes he not only might lose those bills he may be losing the woman he’s fallen in love with.

Almost everyone seems like they’re in a good mood through much of THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT. And why shouldn’t they be? It’s the nineties. Things are looking up. There’s a bright future ahead. The Monica Lewinsky scandal hasn’t happened yet. Fox News was still a year away from going on the air. The bad guys are, in theory, not anything to get too worked up over for very long. The people in this film have jobs where they get to exchange witty banter with co-workers and if they fight through the day’s troubles hard enough it can all turn out ok. In the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? The films directed by Rob Reiner were often about their subject and little else, like how WHEN HARRY MET SALLY focuses almost entirely on the character’s relationships and nobody talks about their job for very long. A FEW GOOD MEN, written by Sorkin, is pretty much the opposite in the way it keeps the focus on their jobs and the court case of the film all the way through, no romance or anything else between Tom Cruise and Demi Moore to distract us. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT, meanwhile, is about the inevitability of mixing the personal with the professional, how there is no avoiding that and maybe combining the two is the only way a person can be who they really are.

However much the film is the closest Rob Reiner ever came to making a full-on statement about the world we live in, it’s certainly an idealized fantasy of how government works, or possibly how he thinks it should work, or wishes it could work. But looking at it now, the idea of a functioning administration filled with decent people trying to get the job done while the opposition party plots all the horrible ways to do them may not have entirely been a fantasy in 1995 but it was close, just as much of a fantasy now as a news day where you don’t hear anything about the President at all. What this Hollywood look at the office provides is the belief that people coming together to make the world work really do exist and the right decisions can be made, where a retaliatory strike after an attack in the middle east is merely a necessary evil of the job. It’s part of the Sorkin thing how much the characters enjoy the tradition to it all, to never call the president anything but “Mr. President”, and if the right answers are figured out, if the right words are used to make the argument, maybe this is all that’s needed. It’s a nice thought. But it still is a fantasy which means that when real issues are brought up there’s no real place for depth to what’s being discussed, not as much as the film would like.

There’s a smoothness to it all in the way the film moves from one scene to the next and Reiner’s direction is all about the way characters relate to each other in every scene, in close-ups, in two shots, facing each other in framing that takes care of the interpersonal relationships, giving us a big closeup of Michael Douglas when he knows that he’s just met someone special. Reiner rarely goes for sweeping camera movement and it feels like there’s barely a shot that isn’t at eye level but it’s always engaging and, expertly shot by John Seale, looks like the glossy widescreen Hollywood movie it clearly wants to be. Unless I’m mistaken, this film and A FEW GOOD MEN are the only ones that Rob Reiner ever shot in ‘Scope and those two are the ones that feel like they’re striving to be big, splashy, old fashioned Hollywood movie star movies more than any of the others. The film believes in that sort of tradition, as evidenced from the opening credits over Marc Shaiman’s syrupy main theme that speaks to such nobility of the past that has lasted through the years but it’s also the Hollywood tradition it wants to be a part of, the way Sydney Wade talks about the Capraesque experience she wants to have in the White House or even just the Hepburn-Tracy ADAM’S RIB clip seen on a TV.

The flow of Sorkin’s dialogue and scene structure are familiar now from all the TV work so right from the start that dialogue offers a comfort to each line, the way just about the first thing the President says is telling someone, “We need to schedule more events where somebody gives me a really big fish” and the pieces of the plotting all fit together in a way that feels like Aaron Sorkin studied very carefully under the tutelage of how William Goldman did these things. Like much Sorkin dialogue it’s about the cadence of the words flowing together as much as what is literally being said with a few names that would later turn up on THE WEST WING as would snatches of recognizable dialogue like asking about ‘the virtue of a proportional response’. A few other lines are also very much a part of the battles of the nineties with much talk of family values along with a mention of liberal bias in the press and though the reporters in the press room are briefly chastised for asking about when Sydney had dinner at the White House instead of the crisis at hand, the media gladly seems to keep chasing the story to become the ‘unwilling accomplice’ the other side cynically considers them to be. These days in the real world it feels arguable if the ‘unwilling’ part of that even applies, if it even ever did, and certainly the press in the film gives Bob Rumsen the chance to make all the baseless accusations about Sydney that he wants. The take on the media as presented seems to be lightly ambivalent at best and maybe portraying them as an accessory at worst but it feels like Reiner/Sorkin don’t want to go too far down this rabbit hole, simply portraying them as a necessary evil for whichever side to get their message out there.

The film still wants to be about the optimism found in the President and Sydney falling for each other as well as all the people at the White House working together and verbally sparring with each other, the arguments over ‘fight the fights that we can win’ and the ‘ones that need fighting’. There’s a wistful feeling that comes from looking at all this now, fighting for the environment and against the gun lobby, thinking about how all those years ago it felt like there was a shot at getting some of these things taken care of but instead of really getting to the heart of these matters the film spends time negotiating on where the votes are going to go and seems to feel at times like the characters have nothing to argue about but the President’s poll numbers going down. Maybe the problem is the more lighthearted dialogue with such a Sorkin flavor is what sticks and the more serious stuff doesn’t quite have the same punch, missing the sort of depth to its arguing about ideals that Sorkin seemed to get better at a few years later a few seasons into THE WEST WING. If that show came out of wanting to do more with those supporting characters, it’s hard not to think that at roughly 113 minutes a few more to spend time on those subjects and how these people get their job done wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world. The plotting is tight enough that it feels like it could use some breathing room, maybe a few extra beats with the President’s daughter who seems forgotten near the end or the staff members to make it all that much richer. The pieces of the plot go together in a smart way, but it almost feels like a few scenes are missing before it quickly jumps to the climax and the all-important big speech.

Seeing this film on opening weekend, one thing that impressed me was how, unlike so many other films that feature a President, this one made no bones about which side was which, even while avoiding actually naming the parties aside from maybe one briefly seen graphic on a TV news report but when Richard Dreyfuss’s Bob Rumsen speaks in front of the Conservative Coalition of America while decrying Sydney as working for ‘an ultra-liberal political action committee’, it’s not exactly left ambiguous. When that Senator is seen plotting while smoking cigars with several of his fellow evil compatriots on the right it paints them with as broad and villainous brush as possible, which I now suspect might be the most believable scene in the film. Maybe back then I also wondered how large amounts of people would feel about being thought of as on the side of the bad guys which may have possibly hurt the film at the box office, giving an ironic spin to when Douglas says, “I don’t think you win elections by telling 59% of the people that they’re wrong.” Now, all these years later, the nastiness of the Dreyfuss character coming from that side is too believable so whatever such people might have thought doesn’t seem to matter very much. We know what they are. It makes me think about how on THE WEST WING it sometimes played like Sorkin seemed to spend part of the time portraying the belief that coming to an agreement was ultimately possible, that if you could just sit down and talk reasonably with the other side it could all end in handshakes while here Reiner didn’t seem to mind presenting them so unredeemable and villainous especially in the nastiness of his old friend Richard Dreyfuss in portraying a sort of anti-avatar to represent what the director believes is everything bad in the world. And, sadly, back in 1995 he had no idea what was to come.

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT wants to believe in those ideals of making the country better while at the same time making your own life better but, more than that, you have to do something about it. You have to act. You can’t just wait. You can’t just stand by while things happen and the other side takes over the conversation and wait for what you think will be your chance to do something about it. From the beginning the plot is clearly designed to build to the State of the Union but the big speech is instead done in the much more intimate setting of the White House Press Room, seemingly on the spur of the moment and the problems in the film are solved with those words when the President finally decides to speak, Paddy Chayefsky for people with an optimistic view of the world. If a woman can get you to feel her passion from all those words, maybe that’s the way to get the public to react too. They’re good words and inspiring thoughts. Some of it could have been written right now. But it’s also a speech that the movie’s bad guy never gets a chance to reply too, and if only it were this easy. If only the good guy saying, “Being president is entirely about character” was something that people could listen to and understand. What also depresses me is how the last thing Michael Douglas says to Annette Bening, which serves as the payoff to a running gag of attempting to send her flowers to illustrate the difficulty of combining the personal and the professional, is no longer possible because of what’s happened in the real world. It’s likely that the people who made THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT didn’t believe any of this was possible. It had too much faith in people.

Michael Douglas is a true movie star here, delivering a performance that is fully confident and a reminder of how good he always was, working his physicality to command every room as the President and always making the dialogue a totally natural part of the intelligence he exudes. Annette Bening is the perfect match for him, playing the part in a way that balances charm and intelligence with a natural quality that comes from everything she says. She brings complete life to every scene she’s in. She beams. It feels like this role was designed to anoint her as the star she hadn’t quite become yet which didn’t really happen as it might have but it really is a reminder of how good Annette Bening has always been. The supporting cast is pretty close to perfect as well including Martin Sheen, now looking like he’s waiting patiently to step into the lead role himself always showing the loyalty he feels to his President plus Shawna Waldron as Lucy Shepherd, Nina Siemasko as Sydney’s sister, Anna Deavere Smith as the press secretary, Samantha Mathis as the personal aide and especially Michael J. Fox making every utterance in his performance as the speechwriter always about the passion and what he believes in. The smarminess of Richard Dreyfuss is so potent you remember him as having a bigger part than he really does and there’s also the very welcome David Paymer as the Deputy Chief of Staff, especially for the way he delivers the extremely Sorkinian line, “I could explain it better, but I’d need charts and graphs and an easel.”

Politics are personal. More than it ever has for me, it feels like the way people behave and they’re passionate about is what they really are deep down. And I think of the way certain people reacted to what happened to Rob Reinder and his wife, the utter emptiness and hatred that must encompass such people deep inside where there is nothing good. There are also the movies that Reiner directed over the past thirty years since THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT that people don’t talk about. THE STORY OF US. ALEX & EMMA. RUMOR HAS IT. THE BUCKET LIST, which, helped by the star power of Jack Nicholson, was a hit but only seems to be remembered for its title and nothing else. Others that I have not seen and possibly will not. We don’t have to mention them. Ultimately, what matters is what matters. Certain films he made matter. The person who Reiner was matters. The way he screamed, “$26,000 WORTH OF SIDES???” in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET matters. Certain other people and their beliefs don’t not to mention the ones who may as well be on that side anyway. THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT might not be the Capraesque classic it clearly wants to be and maybe the way it believes that a firm speech will solve everything represents a denial of such things that I know are out there. But it also represents a dream of possibilities that I want to believe in. I just don’t have the heart for it right now. But maybe someday I will. If only certain things can change.

The Limitlessness Of Our Hopes

The mood in the air isn’t so good. You know what I’m talking about. Call it cynicism, call it disillusionment, call it fear, call what’s causing it even worse than that, this is the world we live in right now and things don’t seem like they’re getting any better. How different this is from the cynicism of other times is tough to pin down but the feeling has certainly been around before. It was there back in the ‘70s, even if that was a very different era and one thing which set it apart was how much so many of the films could be a true reflection of what was going on, which you can’t really say now to that extent. By 1978, those things were beginning to change as if the very idea of a ‘70s film had peaked, maybe it was in November ’76 when ROCKY opened only days after NETWORK, so a few of the most popular films of the year—GREASE, SUPERMAN, ANIMAL HOUSE, JAWS 2—didn’t have such things on their mind and feel like they were already looking forward to what the flashier, shallower ‘80s became. CAPRICORN ONE, which opened in June of ‘78, isn’t as known today as you’d expect possibly due to rights issues and feels like it falls into a middle ground between the two decades, exploring the paranoia and mistrust in the air that was such a part of the time while also trying to be a slick, enjoyable popcorn thriller where you shouldn’t think too much about those things. The film was written and directed by Peter Hyams, a longtime genre journeyman of the sort we don’t really have now, one who made so many films and even later served as his own director of photography, that it’s hard not to admire such a body of work even if the results didn’t always match his ambition.

There are at least a few films directed by Peter Hyams which have substantial followings that I honestly wish I liked better but, on the other hand, there are others where I’m still pleasantly surprised at how effective they are so let’s just say there are some which will go unnamed here that you might like more than I do but maybe I like THE RELIC and his remake of NARROW MARGIN more than you do. Sometimes what a film is going for, even if those aims are modest, hits the mark just right. We’ll leave it at that. CAPRICORN ONE is a slick, entertaining film but I always find myself wishing that I liked it just a little bit more, unable to shake that the feeling that it could use more to chew on in the narrative, the way it provides a rush of excitement but still plays like it’s missing a certain something to give it all some extra weight and make it completely satisfying. Either way, it’s still one of the most impressive ever made by the director, right up there with 1974’s BUSTING which, like CAPRICORN ONE, also starred the great Elliott Gould and was at least as cynical, maybe even more so. CAPRICORN ONE is impressively mounted even while raising a lot of questions that it doesn’t spend enough time exploring, all the way up to an ending that brings out a ‘…so what happens now?’ response in practically everyone who sees it like few other films ever have. On each return viewing through the years I keep wishing there was a little more to it all, but the film still manages to be enjoyable in an old-fashioned popcorn thriller way and that at least counts for something.

Only moments before liftoff of the first manned crew to Mars known as Capricorn One, the three astronauts onboard are rushed out of the space capsule and whisked away to an unknown location as the empty spacecraft takes off. When the astronauts, Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and John Walker (O.J. Simpson) arrive at what appears to be an abandoned military base, NASA head James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) informs them it was recently discovered that the life-support system on the spacecraft was faulty which would have meant their deaths within weeks. And to keep funding for the space program alive, as well as public interest, he has arranged to fake the entire landing on Mars entirely on a makeshift soundstage that has been set up there, using a threat to their families as an assurance the astronauts will take part in the coverup. Meanwhile, NASA technician Elliot Whitter (Robert Walden) has noticed irregularities from his console while monitoring but when he mentions the suspicions to his friend, reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), he immediately vanishes, sending Caulfield on the trail of what has happened to him. But while the fake Mars landing goes according to plan, months later a faulty heat shield causes the empty ship to burn up on reentry, which leads the three astronauts to realize there’s no way they’ll be allowed to live. They make their escape and soon crash in the desert with Kelloway sending men after them to finish the job as Caulfield continues his investigation, getting closer to something he knows is very wrong about the entire Mars mission.

Practically the first lines of dialogue in CAPRICORN ONE are delivered by Lou Frizzell, a familiar aw, shucks type of character actor born in Missouri who died of lung cancer just after his 59th birthday a year following the release of this film, his last, although there were multiple TV appearances in between. Here he plays the small role of Horace Gruning, a NASA technician who tearfully informs the astronauts how proud he is to be even a small part of this historic mission that his whole life has been building up to as he hands over a bible for them to have on their journey. He alone in this film seems to represent the optimistic, naive belief of the American public in the dream of looking up at the stars and going to space, a belief the movie undercuts only moments later in various ways like how even the Vice President attending the launch isn’t that interested in what he’s getting to witness. Watching the film now is a reminder of how much CAPRICORN ONE was a product of a time of that particular sort of cynicism, a feeling is made clear impeccably in the lengthy speech that Hal Holbrook’s mission head gives which lays out the public indifference to the space program and what he feels needs to be done about that to keep it alive by any means necessary. Even the reporters covering the launch played by Elliott Gould and Karen Black don’t seem too impressed by what’s going on, instead focusing on the drudgery of their lifestyle and whether Gould’s Robert Caulfield should keep trying to flirt with her, no idea of the big story that’s really going on right at that moment. “There’s nothing left to believe in!” Holbrook shouts at James Brolin to justify perpetuating a massive fraud on the public. Only lies can keep the dream alive in the USA.

Starting there, CAPRICORN ONE has what feels like a perfect setup that only partly gets followed through on and the film becomes not so much about the deception which it slightly rushes through or how to sell that story to the unknowing public as it does keeping such a conspiracy going through whatever nefarious means necessary, all done with a plot structure that almost feels schematic as if working out the story was determined by how many filming days some of the actors would need to be available for. After their initial shock at the situation, the three astronauts mostly brood while instead of providing details about the conspiracy to pull over this fraud on the public feels like it’s left entirely on faith. Blanks aren’t filled in, even with all the dialogue Hal Holbrook gets there’s not enough we’re being told about the machinery behind all this to believe it. It’s hard to swallow that only one technician in all of Mission Control notices anything wrong but there’s apparently an endless amount of people involved in the coverup whether employed by NASA, and it’s kind of crazy that NASA cooperated with this film, or some men in black-type outfit. All this at least looks forward to THE X-FILES but a more skillful approach might find a way to deal with the plotting so it’s not an issue, good dialogue to wave some of that away and get it to work but the film doesn’t spend enough time trying to do this. As much cleverness as there is to the staging and dialogue, it’s the details needed to have the story fully work that are missing, just as there are likely more than a few flaws in the science to the supposed Mars mission presented as well, and it all makes me want to read the book this is based on that doesn’t exist to fill in some of those details. The cynicism of the time may have been an inspiration for Hyams but it feels like too much of a comic strip approach, THE PARALLAX VIEW for kids who read Dynamite Magazine.

But even with all the flaws that run through it, Hyams clearly knows how to keep the intrigue of the story going and the way he shoots it is always effective like the eeriness to the makeshift Mars set that’s been constructed or how the dark, almost ominous look of mission control prefigures the way his visual style got more extreme, and much darker, as the years went on, as if trying to see how far he could go and still have an image. All of CAPRICORN ONE is richly well-photographed by Bill Butler, one of the most underrated cinematographers of the ‘70s, giving each scene a flavor which captures the various locations in the right way and always finds just the right angle on the actors as they rattle off some of their endless speeches. The individual sequences almost always have a kick to them, whether the POV of Elliott Gould’s car when it goes dangerously out of control without any brakes or the way the film cuts between the astronaut’s breakout and Hal Holbrook’s speech to the press memorializing them. And the invigorating, full-bodied score by Jerry Goldsmith which is likely one of his best of the period, adds immeasurably to the excitement and growing suspense right from the moment it begins during the opening credits.

Along with this, any movie where Elliott Gould becomes the one guy to depend on to save the day is something I’m going to all in favor of and the more his storyline becomes the focus of the film the more the tension seems to rise. Gould’s scenes with his co-stars throughout like Karen Black as the fellow reporter he flirts with, Brenda Vaccaro as Brubaker’s wife and David Doyle as Caulfield’s boss are all written in a somewhat mannered way, dialogue that becomes about the dialogue they’re rattling off at each other which in theory should be annoying but still gives the film an energetic lift that it doesn’t otherwise have. Hyams clearly loves giving his actors long, colorful speeches to chew their way through, which makes the more stoic approach taken to the astronauts a little disappointing since it feels like James Brolin could use one of those rather than just looking upset all the time. Sam Waterston does crack jokes which helps and is pretty much his main characterization while O.J. Simpson as the third is basically just there. When the three of them separate to attempt an escape and Brolin says, “There’s not enough time, there’s too much to say, so let’s go,” it’s a good moment with appropriate gravity but I still wish he could take the moment to say a little more. When their plane crash lands in the desert and one of them compares it to arriving on to Mars it’s a funny observation but the scenes of the astronauts trying to make their way through the landscape becomes too repetitive and when it spends five minutes of screentime on James Brolin fending off a rattlesnake, I find myself wishing we could get more details about the coverup and Elliott Gould’s investigation instead.

But so much of the film keeps moving, maybe faster than you’d expect in the first hour, and after slightly rushing through the machinations to the faked Mars landing and the aftermath it becomes about the race to cover all this up as fast as possible. All the paranoia makes sense when the government is depicted as conspiring to murder its best and brightest, with the idea that the film prefigures a world when certain entities would be too big to fail buried under all the chases, even if NASA isn’t what anyone has to worry about these days. On the DVD audio commentary Hyams talks about how audiences at the time would cheer when news cameras turn to capture a certain sight in the final scene but I’m not sure we can count on the media for that in the real world anymore and maybe we couldn’t even then. At least the momentum is there as the film builds to the climax and when Elliott Gould enlists the help of crop-dusting pilot Telly Savalas there’s a confidence in the way the comedy of the moment is played between the two men, which suddenly feels like it’s ok to just sit back and enjoy the movie at this point. And there are far worse things a film can do than provide an awesome helicopter chase in the climax, especially one as good as this. I still wish there was more to the end gets me to imagine the epilogue of the book that, again, doesn’t exist and which makes the film feel incomplete. Enjoyable, but still incomplete. The Billy Wilder screenwriting rule that says, “Don’t hang around” at the end doesn’t work here, not when the beat it ends on without more details isn’t entirely satisfying. Still, there’s a reason why I come back to this every few years, maybe because I’m hoping to like it a little better, maybe because I already know I’m going to like it just enough. Or maybe because we’ve gotten to the point where the movie isn’t cynical enough about the way things are and it’s become comforting to revisit what people thought was possible at another point in time.

Elliott Gould is top-billed and though he enters the film too late to be called the main character (the final shot seems to indicate who that is, I suppose) he still brings a delightfully off-kilter feel to his everyman, getting deeper into the conspiracy even though he doesn’t even know what it is for a long time and the energy the actor brings to it makes the film that much more endearing all by himself. James Brolin is dependably serious and the way he presents himself you believe that he is someone who has always believed in the ideals he strives for, that he wouldn’t know how to be sarcastic about something if he tried. Hal Holbrook is so good in his long speeches that he almost gets us to believe in the outlandishness of the entire plot with so many memorable phrasings like the way he says, “I can understand if it was a new Lucy show…” when bemoaning people complaining about television coverage of past moon missions which sometimes comes to me in the dead of night. Brenda Vaccaro brings the right sort of humanity to her unknowing wife, Sam Waterston gets to steal each moment he has a bad joke to deliver and it may as well be mentioned that O.J. Simpson is there too as the third astronaut but it’s easy to forget about that since I can’t think of anything he does in this that ranks with handing the cat over to Fred Astaire at the end of THE TOWERING INFERNO. Among the many familiar faces, David Doyle looks like he’s never had more fun in his life than when he gets to bark his way through those lengthy speeches he gets to say to Elliott Gould. Telly Savalas yelling “Perverts!” plays like this film’s version of Keenan Wynn in DR. STRANGELOVE, James Karen is the Vice President, James B. Sikking in the base control room keeping an eye on the astronauts holds a pipe in his mouth just like he does in POINT BLANK and playing the oddly named Judy Drinkwater, the interplay Karen Black has with Gould in her ‘special appearance’ about how much they want to jump each other is enjoyable enough to make me imagine sequels where they investigate other government coverups and it leans even further into the whole Nick & Nora thing by making her a co-lead. I’ve imagined far worse movies that never got made.

To get into a specific memory from the past year, back in October 2025 there was a day on the TCM Classic Cruise when the ship made a stop at Castaway Cay at Lighthouse Point where we went to the beach, did a little snorkeling, had lunch, then on the way back got caught in a sudden downpour which soaked us only since we were in the middle of a very long bridge that led to the ship and had nowhere to go. Once we got back and dried off the two of us went to a screening of CAPRICORN ONE featuring one of the guests of the voyage, Brenda Vaccaro. I mean, of course we did. Maybe this was the best day of last year. Maybe I’d like to be back there again right now. At least I got to experience it all that one time. And incidentally, she had some problems with the ending too but that’s what happens when you see CAPRICORN ONE for the first time. As for Vacarro, who really is the emotional center of the film, she was a terrific guest on the cruise and seems like a real trip, recalling a few details like Hyams’ background as a war photographer during Vietnam and that the director came up with the emotional scene where she reads Dr. Seuss to her kids during production because he wanted to give her more to do. I did not get to meet her myself but one other person on the cruise told me that she gladly talked to him about SUPERGIRL for twenty minutes, so Brenda Vaccaro seems ok in my book. During her talk I also kept remembering how the film’s gentle love ballad on the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack album is named after her character, titled “Kay’s Theme”. But to get back to the film itself, CAPRICORN ONE is film that I’ll always have fondness for even as I wish it were as good as the one that I want it to be. I’m still glad it’s there to return to and remember certain dreams we have, whether it’s going to Mars or the idea that Elliott Gould really can save the day. That’s definitely something we can believe in and such a dream is just as important now as ever.